


all we do is drive

by liquidmeasure



Series: you can drive all night [2]
Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Car Sex, Driving, M/M, Recreational Drug Use, Smoking, flip flops, talking about feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-22
Updated: 2015-10-22
Packaged: 2018-04-27 14:39:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5052532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/liquidmeasure/pseuds/liquidmeasure
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Zayn wants to drive, so they drive.</i>
</p><p> </p><p>a small followup to <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/2493416">you can drive all night</a>, in honor of the plane definitely going upside down since I first posted it a year ago.</p><p>title is from Drive by Halsey, obvs...</p>
            </blockquote>





	all we do is drive

“Is there a cigarette lighter in this thing?”

 

It’s the first thing he’s said in ten minutes. Harry glances over at him quickly then back at the road.

 

“It’s your car.”

 

“Haven’t had it very long.”

 

“Yeah well…I dunno. Did it come with instructions?”

 

Zayn laughs, short and perfunctory.

 

“Maybe, yeah.” He’s digging in the glove box and talking around a cigarette, one of the cheap rolled ones he used to smoke out on balconies at foreign hotels and in the strange cavernous cement corridors that always seemed to come attached to stadiums. The cigarette bobs in his mouth as he talks, Harry can see it out the corner of his eye.

 

_Used to smoke. Used to. Everything’s become past tense suddenly. Zayn used to have more hair. He used to wear tighter jeans and—_

Harry looks at Zayn properly again, just for an instant, then back at the road.

 

“You shouldn’t smoke in here. You’ll damage the upholstery.”

 

Zayn stops digging and tugs the cigarette out of his mouth.

 

“Yeah well…it’s my car, innit?”

 

Harry can feel him staring, but he doesn’t answer and Zayn resumes his poking about. Harry rest his hands on the wheel at ten and two…tugs one of his jumper sleeves over a palm and rubs at the windscreen.

 

“Muggy.”

 

Zayn makes a small noise that sounds like an acknowledgement, or maybe an “aha” of discovery. There’s a flicking sound and the interior of the car is lit with a tiny golden flame and the crackle of burning tobacco and a slow breathing in. Harry breathes in too. Matches the pull of Zayn’s lungs to his own. It makes him dizzy, just for a moment, and just for a moment everything is a little too real. The blacktop ahead of him and the lights of the city moving over the dash and across his lap and through the car and then out, left behind them in the night. Zayn sitting next to him...smoking  a cigarette, filling the car with the warm smell of burning tobacco and something else, something peaty and sour.

 

“Is that a spliff?”

 

Zayn is staring out the window.

 

“I thought it was meant to be hot and dry here all the time…like the desert or whatever.”

 

It’s not an answer. Harry signals and turns onto the highway, and the world opens up to their left. The dark expanse of the Pacific Ocean, the ghostly white of the beach and the blackness of the trees. Harry wipes at the windscreen again. They’re fogging it up. He’s not sure how they’re managing that…he feels like he’s barely breathing. He hasn’t drawn a proper breath since he got the first text. The simplest thing, after months of silence:

 

_I’m outside._

Two words. Practically nothing, but enough to get Harry’s heart racing like someone had jumped out at him round a corner. Like he was watching a person rise from the dead.

 

_I need your help with something._

 

\--

 

“If you can’t drive it why did you buy it?”

 

“I can drive it, I’m just not…I’ve only just started, and everything’s all turned around here…”

 

Harry kept his distance at first, his arms crossed over his chest, and Zayn didn’t move to approach him. Like he thought Harry might spook, that he might run back up the walk to the house and slam the door. He just stood there, half shielded by the driver’s side door of the Mustang, like a person planning a quick escape, and he watched Harry and Harry wondered how he must look to Zayn after all this time: fresh out of bed, hair unwashed and tangled, his Packers jumper and blue jeans off the floor and his bloody fucking flip flops. He wasn’t thinking. He wasn’t expecting…whatever this was.

 

“What do you want me to do about it?”

 

 --

 

Zayn wants to drive, so they drive. It’s an absurd request and it smacks of pretense and Harry doesn’t fight it, not after that first question. He just drives.  He palms the gearshift and presses his foot down on the gas pedal and lets up again and engages the clutch and it’s smooth. It’s a nice car and a pleasure to drive and he lets himself go a little. Tries to relax into the moment and ignore the thousand and one unspoken words that are hanging in the air between them.

 

They’re quiet again. Zayn stubs the cigarette out and flicks the butt out the window and Harry purses his lips and doesn’t say a thing about it. It’s not his job to scold Zayn or tell him what to do and it’s Zayn’s car, Zayn’s highway, Zayn’s universe.

 

Zayn shifts in the seat and fiddles with the knobs on the radio and the car is filled with warm white noise interspersed with snatches of familiar melodies and alien voices and then he settles on a station that’s playing a Lorde song from a couple years ago, the one about teams that sounds to Harry like it should be about werewolves or vampires or something. The chorus makes him uneasy. He doesn't want to think about divides, or ruined cities or about being or not being on anyone’s team.

 

“Take the turn coming up on the right.”

 

Harry doesn’t answer. He just drives. He watches the triangular beams of the headlights move over the pavement and illuminate the scrubby brush at the edge of the road and he leans his elbow on the window and rubs a knuckle over his lower lip. Watches the turn approach and hits the gas a little harder and keeps going, straight up the coast. Zayn makes a small noise, like a “huh”, but doesn’t say anything.

 

The song ends, and it’s quiet for a moment, then there’s an echoing whine and the car is filled with Louis. Louis singing about knights in shining armor and _christ_. Harry switches hands on the steering wheel and reaches for the stereo, but Zayn stops him. He grabs onto Harry’s hand and pushes it back toward the wheel and the contact is so sudden and jarring that Harry nearly swerves onto the shoulder.

 

“Leave it.”

 

“No, it’s embarrassing. I don’t want to listen to—“

 

“Humor me, Haz.”

 

He can’t tell if Zayn’s laughing. If he’s taking the piss. The nickname feels too familiar and Harry bristles.

 

“This is the sort of thing you were trying to get away from, wasn’t it? Trite pop shit.”

 

Zayn shrugs. He seems unbothered.

 

“It’s catchy.”

 

_If you like causing trouble up in hotel rooms…if you like having secret little rendezvous…._

Harry presses the back of a hand to one cheek, then the other. The night is warm in a suffocating sort of way. The air coming in the windows feels thick. He thinks of the pressure of Zayn’s hand on his and how it felt. Thinks of the last time Zayn touched him, all the places that hand went. The way Zayn’s skin was red from the sun and hot like he was burning up and the faint smell of cigarettes on his fingers and booze on his breath and chlorine in his hair from the pool and a hint of unconscious mania that Harry thought he’d leeched off of Louis through some sort of osmosis. He knows better, looking back. He understands that Zayn was nursing his own desperation. Something that made him a little too firm, a little too bruising, like he was trying to exorcise something Harry couldn’t fathom. He remembers the press of Zayn’s palm against his mouth, his teeth on Harry’s neck.

 

He bites down on the knuckle of his thumb and hits the brakes, then takes a left onto an access road that runs along the beach. Something Nadine showed him last winter. A place to turn around at least.

 

The song gets to the bridge and goes quiet and the rushing howl of the wind is gone too, now that they’re off the main road.

 

_If you’re looking for someone to write your break up songs about…_

Harry grimaces and pulls onto a turnoff that’s half scrubby sand and half dust and he shuts off the engine. He doesn’t think it through, he just wants the song to be over, and now it’s just the two of them sitting in the dark and everything is quiet save for the surf in the distance and the pinging of the engine settling.

 

He doesn’t let go of the steering wheel. He looks out at the dark water and the song echoes in his head and he waits, then he laughs. Zayn watches him.

 

“What?”

 

Harry shakes his head.

 

“Nothing, just… _Malibami_.” He laughs again, and it sounds like a giggle.

 

“Is that where we are?” Zayn leans forward and peers through the dark at the beach. Harry nods, but Zayn can’t see him, not really.

 

“Yeah.”

 

It defuses something, the laughing. Or the memory maybe. Harry drops his hands into his lap and shoves them between his thighs. Zayn sits back, half against the seatback and half against the door, like he’s waiting for Harry to say something. Like there’s a conversation coming. Harry doesn’t look up. It’s too dark to see anyway. Zayn is just a mess of shadows and reflected light. Like a ghost. Maybe it’s easier that way.

 

“You should talk to Niall.”

 

Zayn makes a noise, small and surprised, but he doesn’t answer.

 

“He’s…he won’t talk about it but I think he’s got—“

 

“I’ve spoken with Niall.”

 

Harry looks up at him then. Peers at Zayn through the dark, trying to figure out if he’s bullshitting. If this is a joke.

 

“What? When?”

 

Zayn shrugs.

 

“After. He called…I answered.”

 

“He never said…”

 

Zayn laughs and it sounds a little hollow.

 

“Very Irish in that respect.”

 

“What did you…” Harry feels something rising in him, clawing at the back of his throat. “Why didn’t you talk to the lot of us?”

 

“He called.” He says it again, like that’s all there is. “I answered.”

 

Harry falls silent. He frowns down at his lap and his jaw feels tight.

 

“We thought you’d like to be left alone.”

 

“The band thought? Or you?”

 

Harry ignores him.

 

“ _You_ left _us_.” Harry remembers the phonecall. The lot of them sitting down in Liam’s hotel room, just listening. Listening to lawyers argue and to Simon, stern and soft at once like a father and to Zayn, mumbling an apology. Niall chewing at the side of his thumb and Liam fretting and Louis gone eerily still, his face set in something too close to a sneer. “You flew away and you didn’t look back and you’ve been cutting yourself off from everyone…running halfway across the world. It felt like…a message. So…”

 

“So you figured I was done with you.”

 

Harry doesn’t respond. It’s not fair. It’s not a fair thing to ask because isn’t he? Isn’t Zayn finished with all of them? Was that not the point?

 

He closes his eyes, because he doesn’t want to cry. If he shuts his eyes and tilts his head back just so, it’ll be alright. He thinks of last year. Of the week in LA when everything felt so uncertain and then fell into place. Something in him sinks. Drops like a lead to the bottom of a lake.

 

“Did you know?”

 

“Did I know what?”

 

He doesn’t open his eyes. He presses the back of his head against the seat and stays stock-still.

 

“Did you know you were leaving last year? When we…”

 

“I don’t know.”

 

“What the fuck does that mean you ‘don’t know’? That’s not an answer.”

 

“I don’t think I knew until I got on the plane. Or like…I’d always known. I don't know.”

 

Harry breathes in tightly.

 

“You promised me you weren’t going anywhere.”

 

“What?” Zayn sounds caught off guard, or like he’s laughing.

 

“You promised you weren’t leaving.”

 

“I don’t remember that.”

 

“In the hotel…in Chicago you said ‘I’m not going anywhere’.”

 

“What, you mean after we like…when you were falling asleep?”

 

“I thought you meant…more than that.”

 

Zayn shifts in the seat and exhales and it sounds exasperated.

 

“I don’t know Haz. Maybe. Maybe I meant more than that. Fuck it. I’m bad at making promises maybe. I just like…shouldn’t do th--”

 

“Oh, fuck off.” He looks at Zayn then and he tries to make his eyes into daggers but it’s too dark and they’re too watery.

 

“What?” Zayn freezes, like he’s not sure what he’s said. Then he laughs. “Oh. Ha. Yeah, like the song.” He’s rolling another cigarette, peering down at his hands in the dark. “You wrote it, not me. Sounds like you know exactly what I’m saying.”

 

“Have you always been such an asshole?”

 

Zayn doesn’t look up. He just nods and focuses on what he’s doing.

 

“Sure.” He pops the cigarette in his mouth and lights it up. He doesn’t say anything for a minute, he just watches the water like he’s thinking something over. When he speaks it’s quiet and Harry’s not sure Zayn’s even addressing him. “I ran halfway across the world. All the way here where I’ve got no one, right?”

 

Harry doesn’t know if he’s meant to respond. Zayn takes another drag and looks at him.

 

“I remember saying some other stuff.”

 

Harry doesn’t answer. He remembers Zayn saying lots of things. Things that made Harry come undone, made his blood run hot. Zayn saying things into Harry’s skin, the softest parts, the parts where it went thin and fragile. He presses one hand against his throat to cool himself down.

 

“I remember we talked about the plane going upside down, that we were bigger than all this.” Zayn waves one hand at the dead stereo. _All this_.

 

Harry waves his hand at the smoke curling into the space between them, warding it off.

 

“We talked about it going loop de loop, not about you jumping out the bloody emergency exit.”

 

Zayn makes a noise that sounds like “fair enough” and takes another drag of the cigarette.

 

“Christ. Will you stop smoking those? It makes you taste rank.”

 

Everything is silent then. Harry didn’t mean to say it, it just sort of came out. Like a reflex. And now it’s sitting there between them, the idea of Harry knowing how Zayn tastes, that it matters. Zayn picks a piece of tobacco off the tip of his tongue.

 

“Are you asking me or are you telling me?”

 

“I can’t tell you what to do.”

 

“Okay.”

 

He stubs the cigarette out and goes to toss it out the window, then pauses like he’s thought better of it. Glances over at Harry and puts the butt in the little ashtray. Slides it closed in a deliberate sort of way. Harry grimaces. It’s going to stink up the car.

 

He doesn’t care. It’s not his problem.

 

“Take off that ridiculous jumper.”

 

“It’s not ridiculous.” But he's already tugging at the waistband, pulling it awkwardly over his head. He tosses it in the back seat. It's not so hot out here, next to the water. The air coming in from the sea is cooler and wet and he shivers a little in his t-shirt. Feels his nipples going hard and the hair at the back of his neck standing on end.

 

“Come over here.”

 

Harry giggles despite himself. He feels nervous. Giddy like a teenager. A little sick with worry.

 

“What do you--I won’t fit over there. How do you expect me to—“

 

“Make it work. Come on.” He’s sliding the seat back, making space.

 

Harry shifts toward Zayn, then braces himself on the seatback and swings one leg awkwardly across the center console. His knee bumps Zayn’s thigh and he puts one foot between his legs on the floorboard. They’re close now, way too close. What are they even doing? He can hear Zayn breathing and it sounds shallow. Nervous. Harry adjusts, puts a knee on either side of Zayn’s thighs and his flip flops fall off his feet onto the floor and he hovers there, uncertain.

 

“This is not—“

 

“It’s fine. Sit.”

 

He sits. Lets himself rest on Zayn’s lap. He feels huge and weird and ungainly, then Zayn presses a hand into each of his hips and he feels small and held and he’s buzzing with uncertainty and desire. Zayn feels solid under him. He feels different. Wiry and weirdly muscular like he’s been fired in a kiln and hardened. He leans forward and presses his lips to Harry’s throat lightly…lazily, like he’s not in a hurry. Like Harry’s not straddling him in a car parked on the side of the PCH. He moves his hands down Harry’s thighs, over his knees to his feet and squeezes each one lightly. Laughs a little into Harry’s throat.

 

“You’ve got no shoes on.”

 

“Sandals.” His voice sounds a little too breathy. A little embarrassing.

 

Zayn squeezes at his foot again, carefully.

 

“Shouldn’t you be wearing a boot?”

 

Harry pulls back, confused. He looks at Zayn, then down at his foot. Zayn’s right. He’s forgotten again. But he was disoriented, fresh out of bed and sleep-addled.

 

“Yeah I…didn’t realize we were going somewhere.”

 

Zayn runs two fingers along the outside edge of Harry’s foot and it tickles. He jerks away convulsively just as Zayn says “does it hurt” and knocks the back of his head on the ceiling of the car. Zayn laughs in disbelief, his face apologetic.

 

“Oh my god. I’m sorry.”

 

“What the fuck?” Harry rubs at his head and slouches back against the dashboard. “Why are you trying to kill me?”

 

“I’m sorry. I forgot how---God, you’re a mess. How do you manage without me?”

 

“I don’t knock my head on things,” he snaps, half serious. He drops his hand and lets it rest on Zayn’s middle. Thinks of being on stage, the way it feels without Zayn there to orbit around, to tether him. The way it feels like he’s spinning off into space sometimes. “and I broke my foot.”

 

“I noticed. What did you do to it?”

 

“I dunno I just…stepped on it funny. You weren’t there to catch me.” He picks at something on the front of Zayn’s shirt. A bit of loose tobacco or weed. “Niall’s just had his off…we’re falling apart without you.”

 

“Niall’s okay. He just works too hard is all. Asks too much of his fragile bits.”

 

Harry nods. Things feel turned around for a moment and he wonders how much Zayn knows...if he and Niall speak regularly. If Zayn’s got more insight than Harry does into how Niall’s doing, despite Harry’s proximity…the way he’s clung to Niall for the past six months like a life preserver. Harry squirms a little, suddenly uncomfortable.

 

“I don’t want to talk about Niall while I’m like…mounting you.”

 

“Is that what you’re doing?”

 

“Yeah. Something like.”

 

“Are you sure?”

 

“I don’t know, straddling? I don’t know what you call it.”

 

“I mean are you sure you don’t want to talk about Niall?”

 

Harry draws back. He searches Zayn’s face, but it’s so dark in here. He can’t read his expression, not properly. So he just laughs nervously.

 

“What?”

 

“Dunno.” Zayn looks out the window. “He said you’ve been in his room a lot. That you’re kind of like…needy or something.”

 

Harry feels himself blushing. Thinks of Niall and curses him silently.

 

“It’s not like that, I just needed like—“

 

“I know. I’m just taking the piss, I’m sorry.”

 

He wasn’t, not entirely, but Harry doesn’t poke at it. He scoots closer to Zayn, moving up his thighs and snugging himself against his hips, like he’s got something to prove.

 

“You left and I missed like…being close to someone.”

 

Zayn’s hands are at Harry’s hips again. He nods, and then he waits, and Harry presses two fingers to the side of Zayn’s jaw, just at the point where his ear begins. Leans forward and kisses him. He tastes like cigarettes, but it doesn’t bother Harry as much as he pretends. He tastes familiar. He tastes like Zayn.

 

The car is cramped and awkward and there’s something desperately hot about it, the way they feel forced together, like they’ve got no choice but to rut against each other. Harry likes the way his hand feels pinned between them and the heat of Zayn’s skin. LA feels good on him. He tastes salty like the sea and a little electric from all the sun and Harry likes the way he sort of glows in the dark, bronzy and bright and brand new. They make it work somehow, the close quarters, the awkward angles, and Harry comes with Zayn’s hand pressed against him and Zayn’s teeth biting down through the fabric of his shirt in a place between his collar and his shoulder that feels so familiar he has to shut his eyes tight to keep from crying out. From making a noise that might sound too much like a sob.

 

They sort themselves out after and Zayn kisses Harry, slow and soft, then pushes him back over at the driver’s seat. They don’t talk. Harry starts the car and drives back to the highway and Zayn switches the radio on again and lets it play quietly in the dark. The sky is going grey above them, like the sun is coming up, and Harry speeds a little, pushing the engine. He feels like he’s racing against time, trying to get back before they’ve got to look at each other in the light of morning. He doesn’t think he can handle that, not now. He can’t let it be that real. Or that mundane maybe. He wants to get home and crawl into bed and sleep and wake up and let this feel like a fever dream.

 

When they arrive back at Harry’s he puts the car in neutral and engages the parking brake and leans over toward Zayn. Fishes around and retrieves his terrible sandals and slips them onto his feet. Zayn catches him as he’s straightening up and pulls him in for a kiss and it feels perfunctory in a way that’s not entirely unpleasant. It’s just…familiar.

 

“Thanks for driving.”

 

Harry licks his lips and nods. He opens the door and swings one leg out and shrugs.

 

“Yeah.”

 

“I’ll see you.”

 

It means nothing. It means a hundred things. It could mean anything. Harry just smiles tightly.

 

He stands up and Zayn doesn’t get out of the car. He climbs from one seat to the other and gets himself situated in front of the wheel with one hand on the gearshift. It’s weird seeing him there, it seems unnatural.

 

“Be careful.”

 

Zayn just salutes and puts the car in reverse and looks over his shoulder. Harry follows his gaze…looks in the rear window at his jumper, a lump of green and yellow pooling in the dark. He doesn’t say anything.

 

Zayn pulls away. He turns the car around in the gravel and his driving is hesitant, a little stilted. Then he’s gone.

 

Harry goes inside and takes his clothes off and crawls back into bed and shuts his eyes and tries not to think of the future. Tries not to think of what Zayn meant or how they’re practically neighbors or what’s going to happen in March. If he’ll stay in LA or cave to his mum’s pleading and go back home. He clears his mind of all of it and hugs the pillow to his face and he thinks of Zayn’s hands, and the way his collarbone peeks up out of his shirt. Thinks of his ridiculous jumper sitting there in the back of that stupid car, and he remembers then...the way Zayn makes him feel. Like he could go and go and never look back. Like he could surrender himself...let himself be soft. Let someone else drive for a change.

**Author's Note:**

> I just banged this out and didn't beta it, so all mistakes are mine. Sorryyyy! <3


End file.
